
Class i-G iSO^ J 
Book ■ ^ ^ 



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COPYRIGHT I9I3 BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



t. CI.A30i-)560 



CONTENTS 

Editor's Introduction ... v 

I. The Problem . . . . • . i 

II. More Money i6 

III. Better Organization . . • • 30 

IV. Better Supervision . . . . 52 
Outline 75 

MAPS 

Forms of Organization, by States . . .31 

Proposed Rearrangement of a Minnesota County 46 

Actual Rearrangement of a Florida County . 47 

Election and Tenure of County Superintendents 61 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

Our neglect of the rural school 

The rural schools are about to receive from 
educators the attention that they deserve. The 
modern industrial city, with its peculiar patho- 
logical conditions, has commanded both public 
and professional interest, but the rural com- 
munity and the rural school have been neglected. 
Indeed, in many respects, rural life and rural 
institutions have lost ground. Relatively speak- 
ing, they are not so efficient as they once were. 

The rural school and educational progress 

It must be apparent to those who have taken 
the trouble to look closely at the country school 
that it enjoys no such favor as the ward school 
of a large city. In neither human nor material 
equipment does the rural school approximate the 
resources of a city school. As a rule, the poorly 
trained teachers are in the country ; the best are 

V 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

in the city. The agricultural community is eco- 
nomically poor ; the city is rich in taxable wealth. 
The country teacher is isolated culturally and 
professionally; while libraries, museums, thea- 
tres, concerts, reading-circles, lectures, and 
professional meetings are accessible to the city 
teacher. The rural school-teacher has little 
chance for help from a superior professional 
source. Supervision in the country is a formal 
administrative matter that scarcely takes cogniz- 
ance of the details of class-room instruction. The 
cities have supervision, or at least the hope of 
supervision, for there are supervising principals, 
supervisors of special subjects, and district su- 
perintendents. Thus in more than one respect 
the rural school has not participated in the fruits 
of our educational progress. 

Disadvantages of the rural school 

It must also be admitted that the rural school 
has been deprived of some of the opportunities 
for efficiency which once it possessed. Before 
the growth of cities, the rural school had almost 
as good a chance to employ the best available 
vi 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

teachers as the village or small town school. The 
opportunity has greatly decreased under modern 
circumstances. The country school cannot at- 
tract the best-trained teachers. It recruits from 
the least efficiently trained, and it rapidly loses 
the more capable and brilliant teachers, who are 
promoted first to the village schools, then to 
town schools, and finally to the great city system 
where pay, tenure, pensions, and the graded 
school attract them. Thus the rural school- 
teachers of to-day are as a whole the least ex- 
perienced and the least competent of the teach- 
ing body. 

Once the rural school had a farm-owning 
clientage with a neighborhood interest in the 
school. Now, in many sections, the taxable 
population has moved to the town, leaving the 
children of a more or less foreign tenantry to be 
educated in the country school. In consequence 
it takes more effort to create an interest in the 
school than formerly. The taxable landholders, 
with a vital family interest in the school, are not 
there in such large proportion, and the foreign 
tenant, less enthusiastic about American institu- 
vii 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

tions, is not so eager nor so intelligent instating 
his demands for the children. 

The need for fundamental changes in rural 
school administration 

It is the business of the educational and the 
public leaders, whose vision is wide enough to 
encompass our national welfare, to turn their 
attention to the improvement of the rural school. 
The country population has a right to hold its 
old advantages ; it should also have the privilege 
of participating in the fruits of our progress. 

No amount of mere preaching to rural school- 
teachers will make the country schools suffi- 
ciently better. The situation requires economic 
advantages and social pressure to produce re- 
sults. Our experience shows that country life 
and institutions have been modified by far-reach- 
ing conditions, — economic, social, political, legis- 
lative, and administrative. They must be re- 
created by the use of the same large forces. If 
wealth has gone to the cities, at least a small 
part of their riches must be returned for the edu- 
cation of country youth. This means the abro- 
viii 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

gation of the antiquated principle that schools 
must be supported by local funds. Expenditure 
for the education of a boy differs materially from 
that used for building roads or for maintaining 
sanitary systems, or for supplying police and fire 
protection. Road construction, fire protection, 
and other similar activities are after all more or 
less local, but the efficiency of a boy has a poten- 
tial significance for the country at large. To- 
morrow he may become a citizen of a town or a 
city, or of another rural community. Even if he 
stays at home, he and others like him will be as 
much the moulders of our national life as an 
equal number of people in a distant city. The 
training of country girls and boys is not a local 
problem ; it is a responsibility of the whole 
state. 

The reconstruction of legislative and adminis- 
trative conditions, which are basic in rural school 
improvement, is not a simple task. Any policy 
of reconstruction is simpler and wiser, however, 
when it is based upon a careful analysis of edu- 
cational experience. It is because Professor Cub- 
berley has carefully investigated the conditions 
ix 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

underlying the efficiency of rural schools that he 
has been asked to discuss in this Monograph the 
measures necessary to effect an adequate im- 
provement in the country school. 



THE IMPROVEMENT OF 
RURAL SCHOOLS 



THE PROBLEM 

The past decade has been an especially fruitful 
one in the field of public education. New inter- 
est has been awakened, additional support has 
been provided, many new forms of educational 
effort have been undertaken, and everywhere 
questioning and criticism have taken the place 
of an earlier contentment with existing condi- 
tions. Notable advances have been made or be- 
gun in many directions. The high school is being 
reconstructed, and greatly enriched and expanded. 
The upper grades of the grammar school, long 
almost stagnant, are being vitalized and are 
taking on new life. Domestic, industrial, and 
vocational training are being introduced very 
rapidly, and in many parts of the country. Mass 
instruction is giving place to the instruction of 
I 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

individuals, and the health of school-children 
is to-day receiving an attention previously un- 
known. 

The country school has not been omitted in 
this process of reconstruction and criticism, and 
probably no part of our school system has re- 
ceived more thought and attention during the 
past decade than has the problem of how to im- 
prove the rural school. Probably, also, no part 
has shown so little improvement. Hundreds of 
articles have been written, addresses made, and 
reports printed on this subject. State superin- 
tendents of public instruction, county superin- 
tendents, normal school presidents, professors 
of education, and institute lecturers have con- 
sidered the question, and have proposed ways 
and means looking to a solution of the problem 
or problems. Many committees have been ap- 
pointed to consider the matter. A few citizens, 
interested in an improvement of rural education, 
have also taken part in the discussion. Many 
improvements have been suggested and some 
have been made, and still the problem remains 
before us, as yet in large part unsolved. 

2 



THE PROBLEM 

For a time it was thought by many that an 
improvement in the quaUty of the teacher was 
the key to the problem, and efforts were con- 
centrated on the preparation of a better type 
of teacher for the schools. This certainly was 
needed, and there is still much room for further 
improvement along this line. Teachers' insti- 
tutes, reading-circles, and summer sessions of 
normal schools and colleges have rendered valu- 
able services to the rank and file of the teaching 
body, and have done much to give to new teachers 
a professional point of view. For the training of 
new teachers for the rural schools a number of 
normal schools have, within the past decade, 
organized rural teachers' training classes, pro- 
vided a rural observation and practice school, 
and have offered special courses preparing 
directly for teaching in the rural schools. In a 
few states further efforts have been made look- 
ing to the preparation of at least a partially 
trained body of teachers for the rural schools, 
by the organization of county training-schools, 
in connection with the high schools. These give 
a one-year professional course, intended primarily 
3 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

to prepare for rural school work, and state aid 
has been offered usually to such schools. A very 
few states have gone even farther and have or- 
dered that all teachers, after a designated date, 
must have had some kind of professional train- 
ing. To provide this a number of institutions 
within the state have been designated to act as 
state training-schools, and to offer twelve-weeks* 
summer courses to prospective teachers. These 
courses have usually been specified somewhat in 
detail by the state, and have been intended pri- 
marily to prepare teachers better for work in the 
country schools. The net result of all these 
efforts has been an undoubted improvement in 
the mental equipment and the teaching capacity 
of the teachers in our rural and village schools. 
The rural school problem, though, still confronts 
us, and we see clearly that an improvement of 
teachers alone can never solve the problem. It 
does not touch it deep enough down. 

The next thought was to improve the instruc- 
tion by modifying and enriching it, and by ad- 
justing it more fully to the needs of country 
life. This was a fruitful idea. During the late 
4 



THE PROBLEM 

nineties, a form of generalized nature study was 
introduced into many rural schools. An attempt 
has since been made to transform this into in- 
struction in agriculture. Economic needs have 
greatly stimulated this movement, and no addi- 
tion to our elementary school system has ever 
been adopted with the rapidity or the enthuiasm 
which has been witnessed in the case of agricul- 
ture. State and county courses of study have 
required such instruction to be given, state laws 
have added the subject to the list of examina- 
tion subjects for teachers' certificates, and many 
normal schools have added courses in it to their 
curriculum. The general introduction of the sub- 
ject has been so rapid that both normal schools 
and teachers have found themselves unprepared 
to give the instruction. The net result, however, 
has been to awaken a new interest in the rural 
school, and to reveal more clearly the need of a 
further reorganization of it. 

Manual training, domestic science, and house- 
hold arts have also been seen to have real value 
in the education of country boys and girls, but 
the problem of how to introduce this new in- 
5 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

struction is still in large part unsolved. In most 
cases the mere recognition of the need and the 
value of such instruction has only served to re- 
veal more clearly the utter inadequacy of the 
present rural school organization to cope suc- 
cessfully with constructive problems. Something 
has been accomplished, of course, but nothing 
of what might have been done under a better 
form of organization and management. 

Recently attempts have been made to improve 
the trustee, feeling that perhaps the source of 
the trouble lay there. In some states a trustees* 
day has been set apart in connection with the 
county teachers' institute, and, in a number of 
others, within the past four or five years, annual 
county conventions of school trustees have been 
provided for. Under the latter plan, one trus- 
tee at least from each board is expected to 
attend, usually a one-day session, and he is paid 
his expenses and a small per diem allowance 
for attendance. Questions of school manage- 
ment and finance are considered, the aim being 
to get the trustees present to see and to pro- 
vide for some of those common needs of the 
6 



THE PROBLEM 

rural school that, to the county superintendent, 
are almost self-evident. No doubt much is learned 
by the trustees present, and the net result prob- 
ably will be a slow improvement in rural school 
conditions. But the method is a slow one, and 
the trustees change about as fast as they are 
educated. 

One of the most serious obstacles to educa- 
tional progress in the rural schools is presented 
by these hundreds of school trustees, who, as a 
rule, know little about educational needs or pro- 
gress. As a body they are exceedingly conserva- 
tive, and hard to educate ; they usually possess 
important powers ; and, because they control the 
purse-strings, they frequently assume an author- 
ity unwarranted by their knowledge of school 
work. Whatever is gained through school trus- 
tees' conventions is of course a direct gain, but 
it is a tonic rather than a cure, and no great or 
rapid progress in rural education, organization, 
or management can be expected from this source. 
The problem of the improvement of the rural 
schools is altogether too deep-rooted a problem 
to be solved by any such superficial remedy. 

7 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

Something has been done to improve the 
schools, too, through legislative limitations. In 
most of the states the old district meeting, once 
so common, so powerful, and a source of so much 
ill feeling, has been reduced in functions until 
an annual school election is about all that is left 
of it. The power of the district meeting to desig- 
nate the teacher has gone, and the power of the 
district trustees to employ almost any kind of 
teacher at low wages is fast disappearing. Taxa- 
tion has been changed from a permissive to a 
mandatory basis, and minimum limits have been 
specified. The length of term has been increased 
from three or four to seven or eight months, and 
districts have been required to meet these con- 
ditions. Grading has commonly been insisted 
upon, and new subjects of instruction have been 
designated for all schools by general law. The 
power of the trustees to build any kind of school- 
house they choose has been taken from them, 
by laws requiring the approval of plans by the 
county or state superintendent. In a few of the 
states, the power to order repairs or to condemn 
schoolhouses has also been given to these same 
8 



THE PROBLEM 

school authorities, or to boards of health. The 
expenditure of funds has been placed under 
township or county supervision, and limitations 
in expenses and in the use of funds have been 
imposed by general law. Permission to introduce 
high-school subjects, or to abandon the school 
and transport the pupils, has been granted to the 
districts, and sometimes used. 

All of these limitations of district authority, 
and each extension of the authority of the county 
and of the state, have been in the direction of 
securing more efficient schools for the children 
in the rural districts and small villages of the 
state. Some real improvement has resulted from 
each assertion of the right and the duty of the 
state, and from each substitution of a larger and 
a higher authority for that of the district. It is 
possible to make still further progress along 
these lines, as will be pointed out later on. 

All these expedients, though, have not made 
progress as fast as conditions have changed, and 
the rural and small village schools, although un- 
doubtedly better than they were a generation 
ago, are probably still further behind the average 
9 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

city school than they were thirty or forty years 
ago. In any case our rural schools are much poorer 
and much less effective than they ought to be. 
Under a better form of organization and manage- 
ment it is possible to make good schools in the 
country and in villages, as well as in towns and 
cities, but the changes needed are far more fun- 
damental than are usually proposed. 

One mistake that has been made in dealing 
with the rural school problem is the assumption 
that it is a problem by itself, instead of being 
but a part of a much larger problem affecting 
the conditions of rural and village life. The old 
conditions which gave rise to the district sys- 
tem, and at one time made the district school 
and the district meeting such important factors 
in our national life, have in large part passed 
away. The same is true of the country church 
and the country store. The isolation, limited out- 
look, and restricted markets of the past have 
given way to larger points of view and to new 
trade conditions. The telephone, good roads, and 
frequent and easy means of transportation have 
put an end to the earlier isolation. Newspapers, 

10 



THE PROBLEM 

magazines, cheap books, and new political activ- 
ity have given country people new points of 
view. The rise of the city as a jobbing centre has 
opened up new markets, both for sale and for 
purchase, and has greatly changed the former 
somewhat even distribution of wealth. The re- 
cent improvements in agricultural knowledge 
have tended to an increase in the size of farms, 
and, near the large cities, to the leasing of the 
farms to tenants of large means, who work them 
in a scientific manner and by means of cheap 
foreign labor. In many other places the own- 
ers move to the towns and cities to enjoy their 
educational and social advantages, leasing their 
farms to recent immigrants or to less successful 
natives. The efTect of all these changes is seen 
in the loss of population in the country districts, 
in the dying-out of the rural and village churches, 
in the closing-up of the cross-roads and village 
general stores, and in the stagnation of the 
country school. The problem is one of a change 
in the needs and conditions of all rural life, and 
the school problem is tied up with the other 
rural problems. 

II 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

In a few of the more progressive and enlight- 
ened communities some marked improvement has 
been made by means of the consolidation of 
small schools, and the transportation of pupils 
to a central school, but the movement, consider- 
ing the United States as a vi^hole, has as yet 
made far less progress than its merit warrants. 
The chief reason for this is that the movement 
must be initiated and carried through by the 
votes of the rural residents themselves. This 
makes it very difficult of accomplishment, be- 
cause, as a class, farmers and residents of little 
villages are extremely conservative, unprogres- 
sive, jealous, penny-wise, and lacking in any proper 
conception of the value of good educational con- 
ditions. Any progressive proposal is usually 
met by determined and often unreasoning oppo- 
sition, and progress by the consent of the voters 
is a slow and arduous undertaking. Matters in- 
volving the fate of nations are often settled more 
easily than are proposals for an improvement of 
the rural schools. 

The result is that, after almost two decades of 
agitation, the rural and small-town schools stand 

12 



THE PROBLEM 

about where they were at the beginning of the 
agitation for improvement, except in certain areas 
in a few favored states. The teacher is a little 
better, and the course of instruction contains a 
little more that is really worth while, but the 
school still lacks in almost all of the elements 
that go to make it a strong educational factor in 
the lives of country children, or a strong social 
influence in the lives of country people. The 
country school lacks interest and ideas ; it suf- 
fers from isolation and from lack of that enthu- 
siasm which comes only from numbers ; and it 
realizes but a small percentage of its possible 
efficiency. Its site is usually unattractive ; its 
building is too often a miserable, unsanitary box ; 
it too often lacks the necessary equipment for 
proper instruction; its instruction is usually lim- 
ited to the barest elements of an education, and 
lacks vocational purpose ; its teacher is often 
poorly trained or entirely untrained, and is poorly 
paid ; the supervision provided is utterly inade- 
quate, and usually exists only in name ; and the 
management of the school is often of a very in- 
ferior type. The enrollment is usually small, the 
13 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

attendance is irregular, and the conduct of the 
school poor. The children, coming from the same 
little area, and often from related families, bring 
no new interests to the school. Compared with 
a good town or city school the country school is 
poor, often miserably poor, and the numerous 
classes, overburdened programme, absence of 
equipment, and lack of ideas and impulses to ac- 
tion offer odds against which the best of teach- 
ers can make but little headway. As soon, too, 
as a school grows sufficiently to make it possible 
to employ two teachers and to grade the school, 
the desire to "have a school close to home" 
leads to the subdivision of the district, and to 
the creation of two small struggling schools. 

Within the past decade the bad results of 
maintaining such schools, where they can be 
avoided, has become apparent with new force. 
The past ten to fifteen years have se^n a marked 
change in the conception of the school itself. 
The old information conception, with a curricu- 
lum limited closely to the old staple common- 
school subjects, is giving place to a new social, 
vocational, and economic conception of the 
14 



THE PROBLEM 

school. It is slowly becoming evident that the 
rural and small-town schools must adapt them- 
selves to the needs of rural and small-town life 
if they are to be of real service to their people. 
The school must evolve into a kind of social cen- 
tre for the community life if it is to reach its 
greatest effectiveness, and the teaching and the 
supervision alike should relate themselves much 
more closely than they now do to the social life 
and to the betterment of the community as a 
whole. The school, too, must offer an enriched 
curriculum and the opportunity for some in- 
creased instruction, if it is to meet the needs of 
the present and of the future. 

The absolute inadequacy of the typical rural 
school to meet these new social needs, and of the 
typical rural community to see them and to pro- 
vide for them, are generally evident. The aid 
must come through a reorganization of rural ed- 
ucation, and this, in part, must be superimposed 
from above. In the judgment of the writer, this 
reorganization must take place along three lines. 



II 

MORE MONEY 

The first of these lines of improvement, and 
an absolute prerequisite in the case of most 
states, is a very material increase in the funds 
available for the maintenance of schools, and the 
increased funds must be secured, in large part, 
from other than local sources. Merely to pass 
laws permitting districts to tax themselves at a 
higher rate will not provide it. In many com- 
munities the rate of taxation for schools is al- 
ready high, often much beyond what is paid in 
cities and towns for excellent and complete 
schools. Still further, the need of increased tax- 
ation for education is not apparent to most rural 
communities, and the tendency of rural people 
to thrift, economy, and close bargaining is not 
conducive to liberality in matters of taxation. 

It ought not to be the policy of the state to 
make rural communities tax themselves at a high 
rate for schools. Probably most rural taxpayers 
i6 



MORE MONEY 

now pay more than an average rate for educa- 
tion. The burden is much greater when six to 
eight taxpayers support a two-hundred-and-fifty- 
dollar school, than when forty to sixty taxpayers 
support a thousand- dollar school. The best 
schools to-day are in the cities, and the premium 
is already too strong on the side of leaving the 
farm and going to town for the sake of better 
educational advantages for one's children. 

Sixty years ago we fought out the question in 
this country, and established the principle that 
schools were to be free and public, and that the 
wealth of the state must educate the children of 
the state. The principle was established in the- 
ory, and, in part, in fact, in the shape of general 
taxation, but in many states the general taxation 
has not as yet gone very far. In a few states it 
has remained almost entirely limited to the dis- 
trict, town, or township ; while in others a larger 
conception has prevailed and general taxation of 
the wealth of each county is the rule. In each 
case it is a pooling of effort, though the county 
taxation unit represents a larger and more liberal 
conception as to the need for and the proper dis- 
17 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

tribution of the cost of an educational system 
than does the use of the smaller taxation units. 
In still other states an even larger and more lib- 
eral conception prevails, and general taxation of 
the wealth of the whole state is the practice, the 
pooling of effort here taking place on a scale 
large enough to result in a real equalization of 
both the burdens and the advantages 6i educa- 
tion. 

The distribution of taxable wealth has changed 
greatly since the principle of general taxation for 
public education was first established. Sixty years 
ago there were few cities of any consequence ; 
the wealth of the country was largely agricul- 
tural ; the railroads of the country were just be- 
ginning to be built, and represented but little 
taxable property ; there were few corporations ; 
the natural resources of the country were almost 
unworked, and in large part undiscovered ; and 
there were few people who were classed as rich. 
Wealth and property were still somewhat evenly 
distributed ; undertakings of all kinds were small ; 
and the pooling of effort on any large scale was 
not necessary. 



MORE MONEY 

There is need to-day, in most of the states, for 
a reconsideration of the whole question of taxation 
for education, and the apportionment of school 
funds, with a view to a better equalizing of both 
the burdens and the advantages of education. ^ 
The social and industrial changes since the mid- 
dle of the nineteenth century have completely 
changed the nature of the problem of school sup- 
port. If the wealth of the state is to educate the 
children of the state to-day, the burden of support 
must be pooled to a much larger extent than is 
now done in most of our states, and state and 
county taxation for education must replace, to a 
large degree, the present very unequal local bur- 
dens. Good schools generally are impossible 
under the local taxation system. It can be shown, 
for almost any state, that there are communities 
which are showing an actual decrease in per capita 
wealth, in the face of a rapidly rising cost for edu- 
cation, while other communities are increasing 
in wealth at a rapid rate. What one community 

1 For a somewhat detailed consideration of this subject see 
the author's School Ftmds and their Apportionment. (Teachers 
College Contributions to Education, No. 2. New York, 1906.) 

19 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

can do with ease for its children, another com- 
munity finds it increasingly difficult or absolutely 
impossible to do. The main reason why Massa- 
chusetts, for example, has some of the best and 
some of the poorest schools in the United States, 
is that the state has always made each little 
town pay its own way. On the contrary, the 
main reason why California has perhaps, of any 
state in the Union, the best general average of 
schools throughout the state, with no oppressive 
educational burdens on any one, is that the state 
has pooled the support of education on a broad 
and intelligent scale, generous state and county 
taxation having practically abolished taxation for 
support in the districts. 

The location of a railroad, a mine, or a quarry ; 
the growth of a city with its markets, manufac- 
tories, and stores ; the utilization of some natural 
resource ; the location of a factory or of an in- 
dustry ; the advantages of a harbor, a navigable 
river, or a waterfall ; climatic advantages, or a 
fine bit of natural scenery, developing a tourist 
resort with big hotels ; good soil, with good easy 
drainage, as opposed to clay and knobs, — these 

20 



MORE MONEY 

and many other natural and adventitious advan- 
tages tremendously modify to-day the possibili- 
ties of maintaining an educational system either 
wholly or largely by local taxation. One can 
take a topographic, geologic, and economic map 
of any state, and mark off the broader areas where 
good schools may and may not be maintained 
without material general aid ; areas where popu- 
lation probably always will be sparse; areas which 
are certain to support a large and wealthy popu- 
lation ; and areas where the per capita wealth 
probably always will be small. Yet in all of these 
communities people live, children grow up in 
need of education, schools of some kind must be 
maintained, and future citizens for the state are 
trained. 

It is from state and county taxation, then, 
rather than from local effort, that the greater part 
of the necessary funds with which to maintain a 
good school must, in the future, be derived. From 
five to six hundred dollars a year is a minimum 
with which a good school of eight months can be 
maintained, and this amount, or any large per- 
centage of this amount, is too large to be expected 

21 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

from district taxation. Many districts cannot pro- 
duce this sum, and short terms, third-grade cer- 
tificates, poor teachers, and weak schools are the 
inevitable results of the attempt to make them 
produce it It is only by a state- and county-wide 
pooling of effort, to maintain what is for the com- 
mon good of all, that good schools can be main- 
tained throughout a state. 

The necessary corollary to any system of gen- 
eral taxation for education is a wise system of 
apportionment. When taxes for education were 
first collected, in many states they were given 
back to the communities which paid them. The 
state acted merely as a tax collector. A great im- 
provement over this method of distribution was 
made when the plan of apportioning the taxes, 
and the proceeds of endowment funds, on the 
basis of the number of children of school age was 
substituted. At first this change was stoutly re- 
sisted, but the reasonableness of taxing people 
in proportion to their wealth, and of distributing 
the proceeds of taxation for schools in proportion 
to the number of children in each community of 
school age, caused the somewhat general adoption 

22 



MORE MONEY 

of the plan. This change took place shortly after 
the middle of the last century, and, at the time, the 
plan seemed so equitable that more than half of 
the states fixed it in their constitutions. The plan 
is still used, in whole or in part, by nearly three 
fourths of the states. 

Although the distribution on school census is 
an improvement on giving the money back to the 
districts paying it, or apportioning it on the basis 
of assessed wealth, it is still, nevertheless, one of 
the poorest and most unjust of all apportionment 
bases. Yet the census basis is more extensively 
used than any other. As a basis of apportion- 
ment it is unsatisfactory and unjust, and its gen- 
eral abandonment would be in the interests of 
justice and good education. The effect of a cen- 
sus apportionment is always to make the greatest 
reduction in the rate of taxation where the tax 
rate was the least to begin with, and to leave the 
inequalities greater than they were before the 
distribution was made. It always favors the towns 
and cities, where the per capita wealth is greater, 
at the expense of the rural districts. Calculated 
on the basis of enrollment or attendance, a cen- 
22, 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

sus basis apportionment is always of greatest ad- 
vantage in those communities which do the least 
for their children. Where private or parochial 
schools exist, it pays communities for the educa- 
tion of children who do not attend the public 
schools, and for whom the public schools need 
make no provision. As a basis of apportionment 
it has no educational significance, in that it does 
not place a premium on any effort which makes 
for better educational conditions in a community. 
Communities are stimulated to get every possible 
name on the census lists, but there the stimula- 
tion ends. If it is worth while for a state to give 
aid to education at all, then the aid should be 
given in such a manner, and under such condi- 
tions, as will produce the largest educational re- 
turns. To stimulate a community to educational 
activity is much more important than merely de- 
creasing its tax rate, and all aid given should be 
used as a lever to get as much from the commu- 
nity in return as it is able to give. The census 
basis of apportionment certainly does not pro- 
vide for " a general and uniform system of free 
common schools throughout the state," and no 
24 



MORE MONEY 

real headway can be made in easing the burdens 
of school taxation to small and poor communities, 
and in equalizing the advantages of education, so 
long as this basis of apportionment is retained. 

Enrollment for a definite period, average daily 
attendance, and aggregate days' attendance are 
successively better bases for the apportionment 
of funds, as each places a larger premium on 
actual presence in the school. The two attend- 
ance bases place a premium, in different ways, on 
every day's attendance at school, and give com- 
munities a financial incentive to do their best 
every day. The aggregate days' attendance basis 
places a further premium on lengthening the 
term, instead of closing the school whenever the 
attendance begins to drop off, or to suit the wishes 
of the majority. From the standpoint of the 
state, the boy or girl most worth paying for is the 
one who wants to go to school for the longest 
time. 

It can be shovm by figures, though, that all 
of these bases, used singly and alone, are unjust 
to the small school, in that each entirely ne- 
glects the unit of actual cost in maintaining a 
25 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

school, — namely, the cost of the teacher. The 
cost for maintaining a school of ten, twenty, 
thirty, or forty pupils is the same, — namely, the 
cost of one teacher. Further, it can be shown by 
figures that, if only one basis for apportionment 
is to be used, the most just single basis would be 
to distribute the money to the cities, towns, and 
districts on the single basis of the number of 
teachers actually employed, leaving each com- 
munity to provide what is needed thereafter by 
local taxation. The teacher basis, though, while 
most just to all as a single basis, fails to place a 
premium on any educational effort, except the 
employing of a sufficient number of teachers, 
and hence is defective in this respect. 

No single basis for apportionment will give as 
satisfactory results as a combination of two bases, 
and the best results, it can be shown, still fur- 
ther,^ can be obtained from a combination of 
teachers-actually-employed with aggregate-days'- 

^ These matters have all been worked out statistically in the 
book previously mentioned, to which the reader is referred for 
mathematical demonstration of these statements, as well as for 
more detailed reasons. 

26 



MORE MONEY 

attendance. Every school, then, regardless of 
size, receives a unit apportionment for every 
teacher employed {$ioo, ^200, or more. In Cali- 
fornia it is i^SSO for each one-room school), and 
also a unit apportionment (a certain number of 
cents per day) for each pupil in actual attend- 
ance. With a small reserve fund, as in Indiana 
and Missouri, to be given to those districts which 
have raised a certain high rate of local tax and 
still cannot meet the demands of the state, such 
a plan of apportionment would come about as 
near to placing a premium on every desirable 
effort which communities should be forced to 
make as any which can be devised. It also, if 
sufficient general taxation is provided, comes as 
near to an equalization of educational burdens as 
it is desirable to do. 

It can be shown mathematically that, by a 
proper rearrangement of state and county ap- 
portionment plans, so as to distribute the money 
with greater reference to both effort and need, it 
would be possible to increase the school term 
between one and two months, in a number of the 
states, with no additions to present funds. By a 
27 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

further reorganization of the school systems of 
the counties, as proposed in the succeeding chap- 
ters, still greater economies could be effected, 
and a still longer term of school could be main- 
tained. 

Adequate financing and intelligent apportion- 
ment, then, lie at the basis of any marked im- 
provement of our rural schools. There must be a 
doubling of funds, in most of the states, if any- 
thing approaching satisfactory results is to be 
obtained. With better-trained teachers in the 
cities, good supervision, good equipment, good 
living conditions, practically permanent tenure, 
and salaries from six hundred to twelve hundred 
dollars a year, it is not surprising that the marked 
educational progress of the past quarter of a 
century has taken place there. The attempt to 
manage rural schools on a hundred and fifty to 
two hundred and fifty dollars a year will never give 
good results, and one of the first necessities is 
so to increase the funds at hand that there shall 
never be less than five hundred dollars a year 
for each teacher employed. This can never be 
done, generally, by relying wholly, or even 
28 



MORE MONEY 

largely, upon district taxation ; or by apportion- 
ing funds, when raised, on any basis which does 
not first recognize the teacher as the real unit of 
cost of the school. In most of our states there is 
now needed a new campaign for the proper sup- 
port of the public-school system, with a new 
presentation of the present need of a greater 
equalization of both the burdens and the advan- 
tages of education. Accompanying this, two 
other very fundamental reforms are needed, if 
the best results are to be obtained. 



Ill 

BETTER ORGANIZATION 

The second line along which the reorganization 
of rural education should take place is a reorgani- 
zation of the whole system of rural school man- 
agement, to secure a more economical and efficient 
educational administration. 

Three main types of school organization are 
to be found in the United States, namely, the 
district, the town or township, and the county. 
Of these three, the district system is by far the 
most common, as is seen by a glance at the 
map on the following page. The dates on certain 
states are the dates when they abolished the 
district system. 

Under the district system, a small and irregular 
area known as the school district is the school 
unit. Each county has from twenty-five to two 
hundred and fifty such separate and distinct 
school systems, each with a school board of three 
trustees or directors, and these are but loosely 
30 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

coordinated under a county superintendent as 
parts of a county and state school system. Under 
the town or township system, the town or town- 
ship is the unit, and the schools of the town or 
township are managed by one central school 
authority. Under the county system, all of the 
schools of the county, large cities under separate 
boards excepted, are managed as a unit by a 
county board of education, just as all the schools 
of a city are managed as a unit by a city board 
of education. Of the three types, the district 
system is the most objectionable, and the county 
system has the most to commend it. 

The district system originated in Massachu- 
setts in the eighteenth century, and in response 
to peculiar local needs which no longer exist, and 
was carried westward in the early nineteenth 
century by New England people. Being well 
adapted to primitive conditions, and to schools 
of meagre scope, the district system no doubt 
once rendered a useful service. It was best 
adapted to a time of isolation, limited vision, and 
to the day of small things and petty interests. 
As a system of school management it is unadapted 
32 



BETTER ORGANIZATION 

to the business or the educational needs of the 
present or of the future ; it is inefficient, incon- 
sistent, unintelligent, unprogressive, and expens- 
ive ; it leads to the multiplication of small and 
poor schools, and to the building of an unneces- 
sary number of small and cheap schoolhouses, 
and, when population has increased sufficiently 
to warrant consolidation, the natural envy, jeal- 
ousy, and ultra-conservatism of the different dis- 
tricts stand as a block in the road of educational 
progress. It has been condemned generally by 
school officials for forty years, and the chief 
reason for its extensive retention is that the 
people in many states have never known any 
other system. 

There is no educational or business need for 
the large number of school officials made neces- 
sary by the district system. In Illinois, for ex- 
ample, about forty thousand district trustees 
(called directors there) and township officers are 
necessary, by the law, to carry on the rural and 
the ungraded schools of the state, though only 
about twelve thousand teachers are employed, 
less than that number of schools are maintained, 
33 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

and the total cost for maintenance is only about 
three million dollars a year. This is about one 
trustee for every seventy-five dollars of school 
expenditure, while the city of Chicago looks after 
the educational and business affairs of a complex 
city school system, employing over six thousand 
teachers, and costing over eight million dollars a 
year, with a board of education of twenty-one, 
and probably could do it still better with a board of 
seven or nine. Had Chicago continued to retain 
the district system, that is, a board of three 
school trustees for each school maintained, which 
was the plan followed from 1835 to 1857, there 
would now be required about two hundred and 
seventy-five different boards of school trustees 
for the city, and the resulting confusion would 
be almost inconceivable. 

What is true of Illinois is equally true of many 
other states. Michigan requires about twenty- 
five thousand trustees, and Detroit eighteen ; 
Missouri about twenty-eight thousand, and St. 
Louis twelve ; and Kentucky, at the time of the 
abolition of the district system (1906), "had 
eight thousand three hundred and thirty districts 
34 



BETTER ORGANIZATION . 

and twenty-four thousand nine hundred and 
ninety school officials, with no unity of purpose 
and no proper conception of the aim and scope 
of popular education." Educational progress, 
under such a system of management, must of 
necessity be exceedingly slow, and schools under 
such control cannot be expected to advance at a 
rate demanded by the changing economic, social, 
and educational needs. 

The argument that these boards of trustees 
represent closely the wishes of the people re- 
veals the weakness rather than the strength of 
the system. Country people are, as a rule, ultra- 
conservative, economical, and sadly lacking in 
educational progressiveness. New ideas come to 
them but slowly; what has been for a long time 
is good enough. No better evidence of this is 
needed than the stubbornness with which the 
consolidation movement has been resisted by 
country people, and the chief progress of the 
movement has been made in states which have 
previously abandoned the district system. The 
schools, if improvement is to be made, must fre- 
quently take a position in advance of the people 
35 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

and wait for good results to justify the position, 
but the ability to do so is frequently impeded by 
conservative and unintelligent boards of district 
school trustees. Progress by concurrent action 
is hard to get ; trustees frequently assume au- 
thority over matters of which they are relatively 
ignorant ; and nearly all important progress in 
the improvement of rural schools has been made 
by first curtailing the power of the district school 
authorities. 

The system is both expensive and inefficient, 
because it leads to the multiplication of many 
small and unnecessary schools, and because these 
schools form no part of a comprehensive scheme 
of rural school education. In almost any reason- 
ably well-populated county, operating under the 
district system, a rearrangement of the schools 
could be made, by competent educational au- 
thorities, which would provide much better edu- 
cational facilities and at the same time dispense 
with the services of from twenty to sixty teachers. 

As it is to-day, each little rural school stands 
alone, and provides the bare essentials of an ed- 
ucation only. It does little to prepare its pupils 
36 



BETTER ORGANIZATION 

for intelligent participation in rural life, to train 
them for the vocations of country people, or to 
offer to them the advantages as well as the es- 
sentials of an education, and it cannot provide 
secondary training for them. Manual training 
and carpentry, mechanical drawing, domestic 
science, household economics, millinery, dress- 
making, nursing, the care of the sick, gardening, 
and the elements of agriculture, it is practically 
impossible to teach in the little school of fifteen 
to thirty children. Not only is there not time 
for such subjects, but the money usually at hand 
is not sufficient to buy the services of a teacher 
competent to offer such instruction. The cities, 
alive to the value of such instruction, are offer- 
ing it to their grammar-school children and pay- 
ing high prices to get teachers who can teach 
such subjects. But the small country school 
continues to provide the cheapest form of book 
education, and to prepare its pupils for city and 
professional life, rather than for rural and voca- 
tional life. This condition will not be greatly 
different so long as the district system of school 
control is continued. 

17 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

The rural school, too, ought to lead in an un- 
broken sequence to a high school, of some kind, 
for all country children. This it usually does 
not do to-day. The rural, and even the village 
district, are too small units to warrant the estab- 
lishment of a high school, and admission to town 
and city high schools must be asked for and 
paid for on a tuition basis. By a proper reorgan- 
ization of the rural schools it would be possible 
to provide much better educational advantages 
in the elementary grades, and high-school privi- 
leges for all, at no materially greater cost, and 
with the use of fewer but better teachers than 
are at present employed. 

Efforts have been made to improve the rural 
schools by means of laws permitting of the con- 
solidation of schools, by the voluntary vote of 
the districts concerned, or by action by the town 
or township authorities. Some marked progress 
has been made in a few states, but almost with- 
out exception they are states which earlier have 
abandoned the district system. In the district- 
system states the movement has awakened but 
comparatively little interest, and in some of the 
38 



BETTER ORGANIZATION 

district-system states it has been impossible 
even to get laws permitting of consolidation 
through the legislature. In other such states the 
laws have been passed, but almost no use has 
been made of them. 

Yet in the abandonment of the little district 
school, except for isolated pupils or in sparsely- 
settled areas ; in the organization of a well- 
planned series of consolidated central schools, 
with connecting high schools ; and in the mak- 
ing of these consolidated or central schools cen- 
tres of a new rural community life, lies, in large 
part, not only the solution of the rural school 
problem but the solution of the rural community 
problem as well. Only in such schools can the 
kmd of education demanded by modern condi- 
tions be given, and only at such points can com- 
munity centres be established which will serve 
as rallying-points and tend to conserve and unify 
country life. To expect such centres to be or- 
ganized voluntarily by country people is to ex- 
pect almost the impossible. To most country peo- 
ple an ocular demonstration is needed to convince 
them of the value of almost any new proposal. 
39 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

The lack of coordination and cooperation be- 
tween the districts is one of the most serious 
obstacles to the consolidation movement. The 
different boards of school trustees of the forty to 
two hundred school districts of an average county 
have no organic connection, and the people they 
represent are often swayed more by envy and 
jealousy — personal, political, religious, social, 
economic — than by all of the educational argu- 
ments which can be advanced. A dog-in-the- 
manger spirit is often in evidence, and jealousy 
of the proposed concentrating centre is often 
a strong factor in producing unfavorable ac- 
tion. 

Under most existing laws propositions for con- 
solidation must be initiated in the districts, pe- 
titioned for, and then submitted to a separate 
vote in each of the different districts. Consolida- 
tion, under such circumstances, is accomplished 
only with the greatest difficulty, and often only 
after repeated trials, and it frequently results in 
the union of only the more progressive districts, 
with the result that the union formed is too small. 
Consolidated schools formed thus by district ac- 
40 



BETTER ORGANIZATION 

tion bear little or no relation to one another, and 
lack the wisdom as to size and location of the 
school which would come from the adoption first 
of a comprehensive plan, worked out for the 
county as a whole. 

The town or township unit offers many advan- 
tages over the district, but, except in very thickly 
populated regions, it is too small to admit of the 
best results. Very often the best arrangement of 
consolidated school lines, too, will follow topo- 
graphic features rather than township lines, and 
again the congressional township area (thirty-six 
square miles) will also at times prove too large for 
one school. This is well shown on the Minnesota 
map, printed on page 46. The county offers a much 
better unit for almost all kinds of school organi- 
zation, and the general adoption, outside of New 
England, of the county as the unit for school 
purposes would be greatly in the interest of 
economical and efficient administration. In most 
other public functions, — assessment and taxa- 
tion, poor-relief, roads and bridges, sanitation, 
control of the liquor traffic, the administration of 
justice, and, in some matters, for schools also, 
41 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

the county is the prevailing unit, and to add the 
schools to the list would be a good addition. 

The central features of a good county plan of 
school administration are a county board of edu- 
cation, representing the people, with the county 
superintendent of schools as their executive offi- 
cer. This board would have supervisory control 
of all of the schools of the county, cities under 
city boards of education excepted, and would 
have power to arrange and rearrange school dis- 
tricts ; to form union schools and consolidated 
central schools, and to provide transportation ; 
to provide high schools for all ; to employ, fix the 
salaries of, and pay all teachers and employees ; 
often to adopt the course of study, add other 
branches, and designate textbooks ; to enforce 
the compulsory attendance laws ; to determine, 
within fixed limits, the county school taxes ; and 
to exercise a general supervision over the schools 
of the county, analogous to that exercised over 
the schools of a city by a city board of educa- 
tion. The schools of the county are thus managed 
as a unit ; school taxes and school privileges are 
equalized all over the county ; good, well-taught 
42 



BETTER ORGANIZATION 

elementary schools, with a rich curriculum and 
maintained for a uniformly long term, are pro- 
vided at each central school ; all districts are 
parts of organized high-school territory, and 
hence high-school advantages are provided free 
to all ; and county attendance officers, with a 
county parental school, carefully enforce the 
compulsory attendance laws. 

A local school officer or officers (trustees) 
would still exist for each single, union, or con- 
solidated district, but the number of such in a 
county would be greatly reduced, and their pow- 
ers would be somewhat closely limited. They 
could well be entrusted with the care of the 
schoolhouse, providing of fuel and supplies, hand- 
ling of severe cases of discipline, acting as a 
means of communication between the people of 
the district and the county school authorities, 
and in expressing for the district its preference 
as to the persons to be employed as teachers. 
These are legitimate functions to be retained by 
local school authorities. What would be taken 
away from them are functions which district au- 
thorities are no longer competent to exercise, 
43 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

which they have lost in some states, and which 
they ought everywhere to lose. Such powers as 
the classification of the school, adding or reduc- 
ing the subjects of study, selecting textbooks, 
examining and supervising the instruction, em- 
ploying and dismissing teachers and driving bar- 
gains with them as to salary, determining tax 
rates (except by vote of the district for building 
purposes), handling district funds, keeping dis- 
trict accounts, and incurring expenses, except as 
authorized, are powers which it will be well for 
the schools if the present district authorities 
should lose. These are not functions which the 
people of each city ward or schoolhouse district 
think it necessary to be allowed to exercise, and 
there is little argument, other than three genera- 
tions of practice, why the people of rural school 
districts should. All of the powers mentioned 
above can be handled better by central expert 
authority, as will be pointed out more in detail 
in the next chapter. 

The accompanying illustrations show how such 
a plan would work out in two counties. The Min- 
nesota drawing is a hypothetical rearrangement, 
44 



BETTER ORGANIZATION 

the location of all of the little rural schools now 
existing being shown, as well as the new con- 
solidated schools. On this plan it will be noted 
that the best rearrangement of lines does not 
follow the township lines. The Florida drawing 
is an actual case, the thirteen consolidated schools 
having replaced all of the little rural schools, 
except those in one district.^ 

What we have, in each of these cases, is the 
provision of a well-organized system of schools 
for the county as a whole, with graded schools, 
a rich and useful curriculum, and high-school 
advantages for all. The main difference between 
either and a city school system is that it is 
spread out a little more, but the advantages 
which may be offered the country child are prac- 
tically the same as in the city. Instead of the 
little, lonely school, with its handful of chil- 
dren, numerous classes, meagre curriculum, 
over-crowded programme, and lonely, town-sick 

1 An excellent little book on this subject is Consolidated Ru- 
ral Schools, attd Organization of a County System, by George W. 
Knorr. (U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, Experimental Station Bul- 
letin No. 232, 99 pp., illus., 1910.) 

45 




MAP OF OLMSTEAD COUNTY, MINNESOTA, ILLUSTRAT- 
ING POSSIBLE CONSOLIDATION. (AFTER KNORR.) 

Area of county, 644 square miles; number of rural schools, ijg ; number of 
graded schools, 3. Note how the heavy lines, representing the best districting 
for consolidated schools, vciry from the light township lines, and that 21 dis- 
tricts are required to provide properly for the 18 townships. The numbers before 
" i; " and " H. S." denote probable enrolment in the grades and the high 
school for each consolidated school. Under this plan 21 strong, graded, con- 
solidated scliools would replace the 142 graded and district schools now exist- 
ing. Not counting additions for high school instruction, about 30 teachers for 
elementary schools could be saved, and counting the high schools the new plan 
could be carried out with no increase in the number of teachers employed. 




MAP, SHOWING CONSOLIDATED DISTRICTS AND LOCA- 
TION OF CONSOLIDATED SCHOOL HOUSES, IN DUVAL 
COUNTY, FLORIDA. (AFTER KNORR.) 

Area of county, 884 square miles. Location of future consolidated schools 
shown by a circle. Two launches are used in transportation, in addition to 
twenty-eight wagons, all owned by the county. 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

teacher, there is a school graded into from three 
to eight classrooms, enough pupils to awaken a 
real interest, an enriched curriculum and special 
teachers, a principal and a group of teachers less 
lonesome and less anxious to get to the city to 
teach, part at least of a high-school course, and a 
school that will awaken community interest and 
pride. By building a proper building, as can be 
done with the larger taxable area to pay for it, a 
building can be provided which is not only 
modern, well-heated, and thoroughly sanitary, but 
one which will contain a library room, a manual 
training and carpentry room, a domestic science 
and household arts room, and ground opportuni- 
ties sufficient for good instruction in agricul- 
ture. By adding an assembly hall of sufficient size, 
with stage, movable seats, piano, and stereopticon, 
which canbe done at but small extra cost, theschool 
could become what every consolidated or central 
school should become, a permanent educational, 
intellectual, and social centre for the people of 
the enlarged school district, a rallying-point for 
the people of the community, and a strong uni- 
fying force in country life. Lectures, entertain 
48 



BETTER ORGANIZATION 

ments, public meetings, discussions, debates, ex- 
hibitions of school work, local institutes, and 
social gatherings could then be held at the central 
school, the same wagons which bring the children 
to school in the daytime serving to bring their 
parents at night, or at other times. Traveling 
and branch libraries may here find a home. The 
different movements for the socializing of country 
life and the socializing of the rural school here 
meet on common ground. 

The plan for the reorganization of county and 
small- village education here outlined really pro- 
vides for offering to country people practically 
as good educational advantages as are possessed 
by city people, at no greater cost, and with the 
advantage of the country to live in. It means the 
making-over of the rural schools by incorporating 
into their curricula the special advantages now 
possessed by the cities, and into their organiza- 
tion and management the best city administra- 
tive experience. To conceive of the plan in its 
details and to see its advantages requires more 
imagination than country people usually possess, 
and, with the change which in many places is 
49 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

taking place in the character of the country peo- 
ple, more than we can expect these new classes 
to have for some time to come. If the country 
school is to be revitalized in any such manner 
and made into a social instrument adapted to pre- 
sent educational and economic needs, it will have 
to be accomplished largely by the interposition 
of the state. If we wait for action by those who 
now apparently seem so satisfied with the district 
system, we shall wait another generation or two 
before any marked results are achieved. 

There are three main ways of inaugurating the 
county plan of school organization. 

The first way is by a county commission, as in 
Minnesota. Under this plan, on a petition of one 
fourth of the electors, the county commissioners 
appoint a rural school commission of seven, one 
of whom shall be the county school superintend- 
ent. This commission proceeds to redistrict the 
county, prepares and publishes a map of the 
same, and an election is called to decide the ques- 
tion. Progress under this plan probably will be 
slow, and many opportunities are presented for 
the defeat in the election of any really good plan 
50 



BETTER ORGANIZATION 

proposed. The second is by an optional adoption 
by counties, first, of a county plan of school or- 
ganization, with a representative county board of 
education, as in Utah, and then afterward pro- 
ceeding to the organization of the county into 
consolidated districts, as has been done in Florida. 
The third plan is to legislate for the state as a 
whole at once, as was done in Kentucky and Ten- 
nessee, create a county board of education to take 
charge of the schools of the county, reduce the 
school districts to subdistricts and deprive them 
of all except legitimate functions, and give to the 
county board of education power to consolidate 
schools and to transport children. Maryland, Ala- 
bama, and Louisiana offer good types of this 
form of county school organization. Similar 
powers are possessed by the town school authori- 
ties of the Massachusetts and Connecticut towns. 
The exact plan to be followed is less important 
than the attainment of the result. Efficient rural 
school organization and control will be promoted 
in proportion as the central control of the county 
is substituted for the control by the districts. 
With county control provided for, one additional 
reform becomes necessary. 



IV 

BETTER SUPERVISION 

The third line along which a reorganization of 
rural education should take place, and a corol- 
lary to the second one, is the provision of close, 
adequate, and professional supervision for the 
rural schools. The supervision which exists to- 
day, except in Massachusetts and in a few favored 
towns and townships elsewhere, exists much more 
in name than in fact. 

It is here that the cities again have a great ad- 
vantage over the small- village and rural schools. 
With their superintendents, special supervisors, 
and supervising principals, the cities look after 
their instruction with a care and a thoroughness 
unknown in rural schools. Yet it is in the cities 
that most of the trained and experienced teach- 
ers are found, while in the rural schools nearly all 
of the untrained and the inexperienced, and most 
of the poorly educated and comparatively unsuc- 
cessful teachers find either their starting-point or 
52 



BETTER SUPERVISION 

their haven of rest. In the better-managed cities, 
if trouble arises, or if a teacher proves weak, 
close attention is at once given to the case, and 
the teacher either is improved by helpful sug- 
gestions or assistance, or is soon removed from 
the position. In the rural and the village schools, 
difficult situations are allowed to become aggra- 
vated, and poor teaching to become cumulative. 
Often a whole year in a child's education is 
wasted, or worse than wasted, because of a poor 
teacher and the lack of real supervision. 

State laws generally require a county superin- 
tendent of schools to visit each school in his 
county at least once each year, and some super- 
intendents try to visit each school twice. This, 
though no doubt useful, particularly to the su- 
perintendent, is of little value as professional 
supervision. Institutes and examinations make 
up about all else that there is of a supervisory 
nature. So large is the office work — legal, finan- 
cial, statistical, clerical, and political — that a 
superintendent has little time for anything more. 
As the work of a county superintendent is at 
present laid out, from two thirds to four fifths of 
53 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

his time is devoted to other functions than school 
supervision, and these other functions tend con- 
stantly to increase. 

The office arose early in the evolution of our 
state school systems. The chief functions at first 
were to look after the school lands, to stimulate 
an interest in education, to gather information, 
and to make reports as to the establishment of 
schools. In a few states the superintendent was 
evolved out of the township superintendent, 
created early in our development ; in others, out 
of a school land commissioner; in others, as an 
offshoot of some other county office, and by a 
division of labor; and, in still other states, the 
superintendency has evolved out of a board of 
county commissioners. By the time the newer 
states west of the Mississippi River were formed, 
the office had been created so generally as to 
form a type, which was generally copied. 

Everywhere the office, at first, was almost 
entirely a statistical and clerical one, and this 
side of the work has been greatly added to by 
the tendency, manifest in marked degree during 
the past quarter of a century, to transfer power 
54 



BETTER SUPERVISION 

and authority from the district school boards to 
the county and state educational authorities. 
The office was created to represent the authority 
of the county and the state, distinct from the 
district authorities on the one hand, and the 
teaching body on the other. The analogy to 
other county officials was evident; election by 
the people, for short terms, seemed the natural 
method; and this plan, once begun, still persists 
in about three fourths of the states having such 
an officer. 

Within recent years, coincident with the evo- 
lution of the many new social and educational 
problems, the expansion of the curriculum, and 
the development of a professional conception of 
the work of supervision, new conceptions as to 
the nature and duties of the office have come 
to the front. New professional obligations and 
responsibilities have been added, and insisted 
upon; new standards of admission to the work 
have been set up; the demand for some real 
supervision for the rural schools cannot be much 
longer resisted; and, generally to-day, there is 
a feeling that the office must soon be placed 
55 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

upon a professional rather than upon a political 
basis. 

Efforts to solve the problem of adequate super- 
vision for the rural schools have, for a long time, 
been made along a number of lines. Perhaps the 
one attempted most has been that of trying to 
secure deputy superintendents, to assist the 
county superintendent in the work of super- 
vision, or clerical assistance to enable him to 
dispense with some of his office work. Except- 
ing in a few large counties, these efforts have 
so far met with but little success. The county 
supervisors (or commissioners), it is evident, 
will not voluntarily provide such deputies or 
clerks, and the superintendents so far have not 
been able to prevail upon the legislatures to 
compel them to do so. The complaints as to 
needed assistance, with which state school 
reports abound, and the low salaries paid to the 
county superintendents all over the United States, 
give abundant evidence that the office, as it now 
exists, has not as yet established itself very 
deeply in the hearts of the people. In almost 
any county-seat city the superintendent of the 
56 



BETTER SUPERVISION 

city schools and the principal of the high school 
are paid from one and a half to three times as 
much as is the superintendent of the county 
schools, are better provided with clerical assist- 
ance, and either of the two former positions is 
generally looked upon as much more important, 
educationally, than is the county office. 

Another line along which it has been thought 
possible to provide supervision for the rural and 
town schools has been by legislation permitting 
groups of districts or towns or townships to unite 
in a union to employ a supervising principal. This 
is the plan which has been followed by Massa- 
chusetts in dealing with its towns. The towns 
there were first permitted to form such superin- 
tendency unions, then they were given state 
subsidies if they would do so, and finally the 
recalcitrant towns were forced to unite and to 
provide proper supervision for their schools. The 
plan of unions for supervision has been employed 
also, to a limited extent, in some of the township- 
unit states, though the township itself has formed 
the most common supervisory unit. Voluntary 
unions in district-system states are almost un- 
57 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

known, and it is useless to expect many of them 
to be formed. The same difficulty is encountered 
here as in the consolidation movement, — the 
difficulty of obtaining the consent of so many 
small, mutually jealous, and penny-wise school- 
district boards. United action by district authori- 
ties is next to impossible, and it is futile to hope 
that adequate supervision will come from this 
source. 

The solution of the problem of providing ade- 
quate and professional supervision for the rural 
and village schools lies in another direction, and 
that is in the divorce of the office of county super- 
intendent from politics, in the removal of the 
office from the elective column, and in the adop- 
tion of an efficient system of county school ad- 
ministration. It is useless to expect a very much 
better quality of county superv^ision than we have 
at present so long as we permit the Republican 
and Democratic parties to select our superin- 
tendents, and chiefly on the basis of political 
affiliation and local residence. Neither can we 
expect much greater popular support for the 
office until it ceases to be a closely protected 
58 



BETTER SUPERVISION 

local political industry, and is opened up to the 
free competition of men and women of good 
educational preparation and experience. 

Once place the office on an educational, instead 
of a political basis ; make it possible for men or 
women from the outside to be considered for the 
office ; make the retention of the office dependent 
on good service, instead of the party caucus or 
the popular whim ; place a premium on accom- 
plishment and service, rather than on trying to 
keep on the good side of the electorate ; and open 
the office as a possible career for which men and 
women would be warranted in making careful 
professional preparation ; and the poor conditions 
now surrounding the office would rapidly change. 
Under the same freedom of selection and com- 
petition for men as now exists for city super- 
intendents and for high-school principals, the 
character of the men engaged in county super- 
vision would rapidly improve, competition of 
counties for men would follow, the salaries offered 
would soon double or treble, clerical assistance 
would be easily obtainable, and men and women 
who now prepare themselves for and go into 
59 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

city or high-school work would turn to county 
supervision as a useful and influential field of 
labor. 

As it is to-day, the office offers no career to any 
one, and the real merit of a man frequently has 
little or nothing to do with either his selection 
or his retention in office. After a man has learned 
his work and come to like it, he is altogether too 
often defeated for renomination or reelection by 
the enmity of the party bosses, by some slip or 
trade in the political convention, by some unfore- 
seen accident during the campaign, by the more 
effective canvass of a "glad-hander " or "gallery- 
playing" opponent, or by a general party land- 
slide. Too often the superintendent who attends 
strictly to his business does so at the expense of 
his political prospects, and the superintendent 
who does his duty, especially in the states where 
the district system is still strong, is frequently 
marked for defeat by the enemies he has made 
in the districts. The vicious political principle 
of rotation in office also helps to eliminate good 
men. After one or two terms in the office a su- 
perintendent's career is usually ended, similar 
60 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

employment elsewhere is impossible, and he com- 
monly leaves school work entirely. 

There can be no question but that the short 
tenure of office, the low salaries, the local resi- 
dence requirement, the political aspect of the 
office, the public notoriety attached to candidacy, 
the long campaign, and, under the new primary 
election laws, the double campaign, the expense 
of securing the office, the uncertainty of election, 
and the humiliation of defeat, together tend to 
keep the best men in the teaching profession out 
of the office, with the result that the average 
county superintendent of to-day, with full allow- 
ance for exceptional cases, represents an inferior 
quality of professional leadership compared with 
what might be had under more favorable condi- 
tions. He is much more frequently a routine 
worker, a strict constructionist, and a good, con- 
scientious clerk, than a man of insight, imagina- 
tion, and educational grasp, who works in the 
light of established principles and sees the ends 
behind the means. 

The fault lies, though, not so much with the 
men who hold the office as with the system which 
62 



BETTER SUPERVISION 

produces them. The men we have to-day as 
county superintendents are, averaged up, per- 
haps the best the system has so far produced. 
It is the system itself which is fundamentally 
wrong. Potentially, the office is one of large pos- 
sibilities. County supervision ought to attract as 
capable men as does the city school service, and 
it ought even to compete with the cities for men. 
As it is to-day, however, the political and resi- 
dential tariff leveled against training and com- 
petency is practically prohibitive, and county 
school supervision, in most states, is to a very 
large degree merely a closely limited local indus- 
try, offering only temporary employment to the 
few who are willing to consider political can- 
didacy. 

The disastrous results of the present political 
system may perhaps be seen best if we imagine 
the county system applied to the school systems 
of our towns and cities. Even those county su- 
perintendents themselves who loudly espouse the 
present plan, would not advocate so disastrous a 
change. We can at once imagine the demoral- 
ization which would follow if our city superin- 
63 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

tendents, high-school and grammar-school prin- 
cipals, and town supervising principals were to be 
selected always from among local residents, by 
nomination on party tickets, and by popular elec- 
tion. The introduction of such a vicious system 
would soon ruin the schools and quickly drive the 
best men out of the work. Yet, if it is right and 
wise to vote for one, it is right and wise to vote 
for all ; and if it is wrong and unwise to vote for 
one, it is wrong and unwise to vote for any one. 
The positions and the nature of the work stand 
on a par with one another, and the poor quality 
of the supervision of our country schools, and in 
the two cities in the United States which still 
retain the elective method, stand as abundant 
evidence that the plan of nomination and election, 
instead of selection and appointment, is both 
wrong in principle and against the best interests 
of education. 

It is easy enough to make almost any one 
recognize the serious limitations under which 
the office labors to-day, excepting the county 
superintendents themselves. Hope springs eter- 
nal in the politician's breast, and, in possession 
64 



BETTER SUPERVISION 

of the office, with its political prestige and power, 
he thinks he can get it again, disregards all evi- 
dence and argument, and goes to the legislature 
and helps to defeat all measures looking toward 
real improvement of the conditions surrounding 
the office. The most serious obstacle to the im- 
provement of county school supervision to-day 
is the county superintendent himself. Many of 
them befog the issue as much as possible by loud 
talk about their faith in the judgment of "the 
toiling fathers on the hillsides," and of the ability 
of the "people to guard the interests of their 
homes and schools," and ignore the real question 
and the far-reaching significance, for country peo- 
ple and country children, of the reforms proposed. 
A few of the county superintendents see the sig- 
nificance of the proposals, both for the schools 
and for the superintendents themselves, and do 
what they can to advance the movement, but they 
are as yet in a hopeless minority. Most county 
superintendents can see nothing in the plan, — 
until some one else gets their office. 

The county superintendent, in his evolution, 
was the real beginning, in most states, of a 
65 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

county as opposed to a township ar a district 
system of school administration. He deals with 
the county as a whole, and the gradual transfer- 
ence of powers to his office from the district 
school authorities, tends constantly to build up 
the county unit at the expense of the district. 
Under an educational organization closely ana- 
logous to that of the cities, the transference of 
power and authority to his office would be rapid, 
and an efficient county system of school organ- 
ization and administration would rapidly evolve. 
The system of county-unit organization, outlined 
in the preceding chapter, can never be complete 
until the county superintendency is changed from 
a political and elective to an educational and ap- 
pointive office. The completed plan would then 
be somewhat as follows : — 

The people, preferably at the spring school- 
election time, would vote for members of a county 
board of education, to represent them in the 
management of their schools. These members 
might be elected by commissioner or supervisor 
districts, if this were thought desirable, but bet- 
ter representatives and better results would be 
66 



BETTER SUPERVISION 

obtained, ultimately, if they were elected from 
the county at large. A board of five is both large 
and small enough, and it would be well if one 
member were elected each year, for a five-year 
term. Three-year terms might be provided, the 
annual elections being for two, two, and one ; or 
four-year terms, with three and two elected bi- 
ennially. This detail is not a vital one, so long 
as a continuous body is provided for. This gives 
the people five persons, presumably taxpayers 
and parents, to represent them, in place of the 
one county superintendent they now elect. This 
county board of education thus becomes a body 
analogous to a city board of education, and should 
be given similar powers and duties. 

The county board of education now takes 
charge of all the schools of the county, not un- 
der separate city boards of education, and man- 
ages the schools of the county as a unit, as out- 
lined in the preceding chapter. It appoints the 
county superintendent of schools, and, on his 
recommendation, assistant superintendents and 
special supervisors, as needed, just as city boards 
of education appoint similar officials. In selecting 
67 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

the county superintendent, his assistants, and the 
special supervisors, the county board is free to 
go anywhere for them, within or without the 
state, so long as the persons selected possess the 
requisite educational preparation and professional 
certificates. The board also fixes their salaries, 
free from any maxima or minima set by law, the 
object being to enable the boards to compete 
freely in the educational markets for men and 
women of training, educational insight, and ex- 
ecutive skill. This makes the county the com- 
petitor of the city, as well as of other counties, 
and enables the county to secure the services of 
the best men obtainable for the money it can 
pay. 

The board also organizes the business, legal, 
and clerical affairs of the office under a com- 
bined clerk and business manager, as is done in 
the cities, or under an assistant superintendent, 
who devotes his time to the work, thus freeing 
the superintendent from the necessity of spend- 
ing his time in routine office work. The board is 
to be the sole judge as to the number of assist- 
ants, clerks, stenographers, etc., necessary to con- 
68 



BETTER SUPERVISION 

duct properly the business of the office, and of 
the salaries to be paid such employees. 

After considering such recommendations as 
the trustees of the different single and consoli- 
dated districts care to make, the county super- 
intendent recommends to the county board for 
approval all the regular and special teachers 
needed for the schools under its charge, the 
board fixing their compensation. If no state 
course of study or state adoption of textbooks is 
in use in the state, they are to adopt these, on 
the recommendation of the superintendent and 
his assistants. The board may make rules and 
regulations, not inconsistent with law, for the 
management of the schools under their charge; 
may, on the recommendation of the superintend- 
ent, suspend or dismiss teachers, for cause ; may 
appoint county truant officers, and establish a 
county parental school ; may issue, on the recom- 
mendation of the board of superintendents, such 
teachers' certificates as are authorized by general 
law ; may alter the boundaries of school districts, 
consolidate schools, and provide transportation ; 
and shall, within the limits fixed by law, deter- 
69 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

mine the annual county school tax, and certify 
the same to the proper authorities for levy, and 
this without review by the county commissioners, 
or supervisors. The board's functions are to be 
legislative, but not executive. 

The number of assistant superintendents, 
teachers, and supervisors of special subjects to 
be appointed for the schools of the county may 
be left to be determined by the board, or may be 
fixed by general law, but should be enough to 
teach and supervise properly the schools of the 
county, and on approximately the same basis as 
city schools are taught and supervised. The 
county superintendent should visit all of the 
schools of his county. His assistants, when the 
county is large enough to need them, may super- 
vise districts, or certain school grades, as the 
superintendent or board may direct. 

So far as possible, the superintendents and his 
assistants should identify themselves with the 
needs and interests of the county, or parts of the 
county, which they are to supervise. By personal 
conference, occasional public addresses, articles 
and news notes in the local papers, the superin- 
70 



BETTER SUPERVISION 

tending body ought to help to mould and to ad- 
vance community sentiment with reference to 
education. In case of need it ought to be pos- 
sible for a supervisor to spend days at a time in 
a school, and the visits in any case ought never 
to be more than a few weeks apart. It should be 
the particular business of the supervisors to try 
to make good teachers out of the material at 
hand ; to single out promising ones, and promote 
them and encourage them to advance in know- 
ledge and training ; to guide the schools in organ- 
ization and management, and to develop the educa- 
tional system of the county as fast as the people 
can afford, and as far as is consistent with sound 
education. From time to time conferences with 
the teachers should be held as to methods and 
results. For such work men and women are 
needed who possess generous personal culture, 
liberal views, good pedagogical training, satis- 
factory teaching experience, good common sense, 
and a knowledge of and sympathy with rural 
conditions, people, and life. To secure such per- 
sons, not only must good salaries be paid, but 
the conditions surrounding the entrance upon 
71 



IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS 

and continuance in such service must be satis- 
factory. 

Combine the three lines of improvement pre- 
sented in this and the preceding chapters, and we 
have the main lines along which real improve- 
ment of our rural and small-town schools will need 
to be made. A county unit of organization and ad- 
ministration, with a county school board represent- 
ing the people ; supervision placed on an educa- 
tional, instead of a political basis, and made 
effective; the subordination and consolidation 
of the districts, on the initiative of a central 
authority, and according to a constructive and 
unified educational plan; adequate funds for 
the necessary support of schools, drawn from 
state and county taxation, with permissive local 
taxation for buildings and extra educational ef- 
forts; and a system of apportionment which 
recognizes the unit of cost of the school, and 
which places a premium on efficiency and attend- 
ance; these are the main essentials of the plan. 
It closely resembles the organization found most 
effective by the cities, and aims to produce a 
school system in the country as effective in pre- 
72 



BETTER SUPERVISION 

paring for country life as the city schools are in 
preparing for city life. There can be little doubt 
that such a central board, composed of citizens 
of the intelligence, ability, and personal char- 
acter necessary to secure election at a time 
when partisan politics and party tickets do not 
cloud the judgment, and dealing with the county's 
educational needs as a whole, would provide 
much better schools for all than ever will be done 
by district authority. 



OUTLINE 

I. THE PROBLEM 

1. Recent educational progress i 

2. Interest in the rural school problem 2 

3. Improving the teacher 3 

4. Enriching the instruction 4 

5. Improving the trustee 6 

6. Limitations imposed and permissions granted . 8 

7. The result of these expedients 9 

8. The rural problem not an isolated one .... 10 

9. The consolidation movement 12 

10. The rural school as it is to-day 12 

11. The new social needs 14 

II. MORE MONEY 

1. The need of greater support 16 

2. What was settled sixty years ago 17 

3. Changes in distribution which have taken place . 18 

4. Need of a reconsideration of the question ... 19 

5. Diversity in economic conditions 20 

6. Necessity of state and county taxation .... 21 

7. Need of a good apportionment plan 22 

8. Disadvantages of the census basis 23 

9. Other single apportionment bases 25 

10. Need of a combination of bases 25 

11. The teacher the unit of cost 26 

III. BETTER ORGANIZATION 

1. Types of school organization 30 

2. The district system 32 

75 



OUTLINE 



3. School officials required 

4. Strength and weakness of district control 

5. District system expensive and inefficient 

6. Limited curriculum of the rural school . 

7. Lack of connection with the high school 

8. The consolidation movement . . 

9. Difficulties commonly encountered 

10. The town and the township units . 

11. The county-unit plan 

12. Powers of local district trustees . 

13. The plan illustrated 

14. What the consolidated school can provide 

15. Three ways of inaugurating the plan 



33 

35 
36 
36 
38 

39 

40 

41 
42 

43 
44 
49 
50 



IV. BETTER SUPERVISION 

1. City and rural schools compared 52 

2. The superintendent's visits and work .... 53 

3. Origin and early duties of the office 54 

4. New conceptions of the office ....... 55 

5. Efforts to secure assistance 56 

6. Efforts to secure voluntary unions 57 

7. The real solution 58 

8. Making the office a career 59 

9. The fault lies with the system 62 

10. The system applied to city schools 63 

11. Obstacles to reform 64 

12. County superintendent stands for the county unit 65 

13. The county-unit plan in outline 66 

14. Kind of supervisors needed 69 

15. Essentials and advantages of the plan .... 72 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



MAK 16 1912 



